UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY SENATE MEETING ...€¦ · sign as well as retrieve your handy dandy...
Transcript of UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY SENATE MEETING ...€¦ · sign as well as retrieve your handy dandy...
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
SENATE MEETING
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DECEMBER 12, 2016
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KATHERINE MCCORMICK, CHAIR
ERNIE BAILEY, VICE-CHAIR
KATE SEAGO, PARLIAMENTARIAN
SHEILA BROTHERS, ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR
LISA GRANT CRUMP, COURT REPORTER
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MCCORMICK: Welcome. So I know that
everyone has signed in, remember that the
sign-in sheet is actually what the Senate
Council Office uses to record your
attendance, and so make sure that you
sign as well as retrieve your handy dandy
clicker.
As always, we’ll try to
follow Robert’s Rules of Order as well as
possible and Kate will help us with that.
Your conversation should always be civil.
We are the adults in the room, I hope,
and be a good citizen to participate.
One of the things that we really would
like to hear is that sometimes we hear
comments from a small number of senators
rather than the full body, and so feel
free to stand up and -- and voice your
concerns and represent your colleges.
And then don’t forget to return the
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clickers to the table. We need those;
they’re expensive.
And so we’ll begin with the
attendance slide. Remember that I’d like
for you to vote after we’ve made the --
after the slide appears and after the
question is read. So are you here today?
Yes? No? Are you saying I had a choice?
All right. Great. Most of us are here.
So we had only one editorial
change to the minutes and so unless I
hear objections from the floor, the
minutes from November 14th will stand
approved as amended by unanimous consent.
All right. Some announcements.
Remember that tomorrow is the Connect
Blue. It is our opportunity to interact
with the Board of Trustees. It appears
that the Board’s schedule will be shorter
than they anticipated, so the meeting --
our reception may begin as early as 2:00.
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It’s on the 18th floor of the Patterson
Office Tower and it’s not too late to
RSVP to Brittany. So please do that, and
we’d love to see you there.
One other announcement: when
you leave today, you don’t have to put
the clickers in alphabetical order; we’ll
do that for you. So I don’t want you to
leave with it in hand simply because
there’s too many folks at the table and
you feel that you don’t have time to do
that. So just put them somewhere near
the box and we’ll -- we’ll get them and
retrieve them, name side up, if you don’t
mind.
So as some of you know, we had
some unexpected personnel changes in our
office this fall and so we are hoping to
get our trains back on track and move
forward with the important work that we
and you do together. But just bear in
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mind that some of the actions that we
normally move very quickly on, we did --
got delayed.
Some of you know and have
already been using the new system called
Curriculog. The President was very
generous in helping us fund this and we
think it’s going to be well worth the
dollars and the time and effort. Some
tell me that’s it’s fairly intuitive at
the beginning, but that the process to
move it backwards is less so and, in
fact, some say it doesn’t have a reverse,
and so hopefully we’ll figure out how to
make that work.
So the councils, the council
coordinators are meeting weekly to
troubleshoot this system and we hope to
have it moving forward fairly quickly.
And, again, right now we’re just doing
courses, but soon we hope to have
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programs as part of the system.
We have been working hard to
look at the ways in which we move
curriculum forward in the -- in the
Senate process. We started meetings with
the council chairs, some officers from
the Provost’s Office, from our office,
people who really had a stake in moving
this forward, the Registrar, if you will.
And so we’re going to resume those
meetings in January and we hope to be
able to announce to you that we have
changed that process in a way that will
make it more efficient.
Certainly, we understand and we
appreciate and honor the necessary
changes or the reviews that we make at
each level, but we’d like to determine
and find a way to make that more
efficient. So we’re effective, but not
so efficient right now.
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And Roger Brown, who is the
Elections Committee Chair, has an
announcement for us.
BROWN: Well, you can see it on the
board there. Last Thursday at 3:00, the
elections to replace the three outgoing
members of Senate Council was concluded.
As a result of that election process, you
see here the three members of the body,
which will become the new Senate
counselors starting in January, Al Cross
from Communication, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
from Law, and Joe McGillis from Medicine.
(applause).
MCCORMICK: Now, we’d like to share our
thanks to Roger, who’s departing, and
Todd Porter. If you guys could stand up,
we’d also like to give you round of
applause.
GROSSMAN: Katherine?
MCCORMICK: Yes, sir.
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GROSSMAN: Bob Grossman, Trustee.
Can you explain why there were only two
departing Senate Council members listed
there even though we’re replacing three?
MCCORMICK: Right. I am a -- my Senate
Council Chair position overrides the fact
that I, my Senate -- my election to
Senate Council is also over at the same
time that Roger’s and Todd’s is. So
technically, that’s why there are only --
there are three replacements, but only
two departing. Thank you, Bob.
So, one of the things that I’d
like for you to just keep in mind as you
prepare items is that we had a
recommendation, from the floor of the
Senate, that we work to provide a
rationale for why the change comes to you
as a Senate. So what is the reason why
we’re voting on this? What is the reason
why Roger is making changes or the chair
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or the committee are making changes to
the distance learning committee
structure?
So we will work hard. We
can’t reach back to those proposals that
have already been forwarded, but we are
going to try to standardize that in a way
that will make it reasonable to you as to
why we’re doing it, why something came to
you as a body.
Finally, an update regarding the
UK Core. As you know the UK Core, Eric
Sanday, Chair -- I don’t know if Eric is
here -- he and his committee are working
very hard to respond to issues of race
and diversity. There are a group of at
least -- we’ve had two now, groups of
students who really feel strongly that
the core, as it stands, is not
sufficiently rich or robust in -- in the
issues of power, privilege, race, that
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this be an intersection of those.
So his work -- his committee is
working hard and he hopes to have at
least something to share with you
probably in the spring.
Thank you so much, we had 30
plus nominations for our search committee
nominees to share with the President, and
his staff, for the Executive Vice
President for Health Affairs. And so,
we’ll move through those. We have a
number of faculty and senators who were
nominated by more than one person and so
they’ll probably rise to the top. Yes,
Davy.
JONES: Davy Jones, Toxicology.
Is this a situation where the
committee that’s being appointed by the
President has a position on it that the
Senate Council is short-listing and the
President is going to select somebody
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from that short list for that position or
the President might not select like
anybody out of the nominees that come
forward from Senate Council?
MCCORMICK: I think it is -- all I was asked
was that they would like to have two to
three nominees from the Senate. So -- so
that’s the way we’re moving. I don’t
know how large the committee is. I don’t
know who’s already on it or from what
domain or population the President will
staff that.
So the -- speaking of diversity,
the -- I have served on that committee as
your representative, and that
search is almost finished, in the sense
that the committee has four candidates to
share with the President. I understand
that he will have -- he will pick two of
those and then he’ll bring those to the
campus community for -- for a
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conversation.
And we’re just beginning the
search for the Associate Provost for
Student and Academic Life. So that
search has yielded a pool of applicants
and we’re working with a search firm to
begin to review those. Ernie.
BAILEY: Nothing.
MCCORMICK: Okay. Kate?
SEAGO: Nothing.
MCCORMICK: All right. Bob and Lee.
GROSSMAN: All right. In case you don’t
recognize me, I’m one of your faculty
trustees. We actually have a trustees
meeting -- actually, it started earlier
today and continues through tomorrow. So
I’m going to be leaving a little bit
early to head to the Health Care
Committee meeting; Lee is already there.
We haven’t had any Board
meetings since our last Senate meeting,
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so I really don’t have much of anything
to report. I guess the one thing I would
say is performance-based funding is being
discussed extensively in Frankfort. And
our administrative team and our
legislative relations team is discussing
with a group from the other -- from the
other universities in Kentucky, also from
the from the Governor’s office,
representing the legislature, and trying
to come up with something that will
satisfy the desire of the legislators to
try to include in the funding mechanism a
little bit more motivation to meet the
goals that they think are important for
universities to meet.
And our weekly -- our leadership
is trying to make sure that no harm is
done; that the goals that are set are
reasonable goals that we agree with and
that we can achieve -- are reasonable for
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us to achieve, and that won’t harm us in
terms of making the goal so stringent
that we have no chance of achieving that
at all, and then this -- just get a mass
budget cut.
So, there’s a lot of negotiating
going on, but no decisions have been made
yet. I’m sure as soon as decisions are
made, it will hit the newspapers, and I
will know just as soon as you do.
Hopefully, I can find out a little bit
more after that. Any questions, though,
about anything? Okay. Thank you.
MCCORMICK: So those of you who were in
attendance in November had the
opportunity to chat -- to chat with
Provost Tracy regarding initiatives that
he has in place, as well as the new
budget model on -- excuse me, Enrollment
Management Model. And so I asked you
over the week hopefully to review those
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notes so that you come prepared with
questions. He’s here prepared to answer
questions and we’ll take about 20 minutes
to do that and then he is also headed to
the Board of Trustees meeting.
TRACY: Thank you, Chair McCormick.
It’s good to be with you and happy
holidays, as well. So I do want to take
just a couple of quick minutes to tell
you about something that we’re going to
do in the spring and enlist your help.
One of the things that we want to do
during the spring semester, prior to the
January 20th inauguration, is begin a
series of campus conversations, really,
forums and panel discussions.
And what we’re hoping to do is
present both sides of key issues and
really have a civil discourse and model
that. But I’m also going to ask you that
in your classrooms, if you’d be prepared
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for those sometimes tougher discussions
that may go on, but be sure again to
present both sides of the issue and make
sure both sides get heard.
So what we hope to do in the
spring, prior to the inauguration, is to
have some -- some kind of a kickoff of
this and then a series of, I’ll call
them, forums or panel discussions
throughout the semester around issues
like immigration, trade, social media,
traditional media, and the dissemination
of information, discussions around the
Affordable Care Act, and discussions of
other key topics that have come out
during this recent election season so
that we can have open to our campus
community, but also hopefully, the
Lexington community, as well. So we can
have discussions around these issues, and
we’ll be looking for faculty members to
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serve as panelists, but also looking for
ideas of, in some cases, key speakers
that we could bring in to help kick off
these kinds of initiatives.
So it really is -- we want to
make sure that both sides are heard on
each of those issues and that people have
a chance to really discuss it in a true
university institutional of higher
learning civil discourse method.
So I simply want to kick that
off with you and say that it will be
coming back to you, Katherine and I have
had a few discussions around this, and
coming back to you for ideas of how to do
this. And if there are other topics that
need to be discussed during this time,
we’d really like to have that as part of
an ongoing proactive discussion
throughout the spring.
So with that, I’ll conclude my
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very brief remarks and see if you have
questions. We didn’t get a lot of time
to talk about UK (inaudible). Dr. Jones.
JONES: Yes, Doctor, recently, you were
able to provide some more elaboration to
the Senate Council on -- on the
mechanisms to obtain some tuition return
like Master’s degrees. It was not just
new Master’s degrees, but also
significantly expanded Master’s degrees.
For those of us who are
wrestling with what that expansion might
look like, that’s a sufficient expansion,
who is the go-to contact person in your
office to go to, do we have this right?
Is this enough? Who would that be?
TRACY: Sure. So maybe just
take a few moments and give them a little
background about what you just alluded
to, and then I’ll introduce you to the
contact person, who is sitting here in
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the front of the room.
But what we’ve done is try to
incentivize the colleges to expand
Master’s offerings, in particular. We’ve
put forth the following, and that is, if
you develop a new online Master’s
program, new online Master’s program,
we’ll share 60 percent of the tuition
with the college. The 40 percent stays
with this central. That doesn’t come
into my office; it comes into the overall
University coffers. But we share 60
percent.
If it’s a traditional Master’s,
one that is here on campus, we’ll share
40 percent of that tuition with the
college or the unit, and 60 percent comes
into the University, Central
Administration.
We also say that if you do a --
a bump in current Master’s programs, and
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remember these are tuition paying
Master’s programs, for Master’s programs
where we’re already covering the tuition
for a tuition scholarship, we can’t spend
the money twice, right, so we’re already
putting that student’s tuition, but these
where students are paying tuition. In
that case then, we will also look at
significant increases.
Now, what that significant
increase means will vary by program and
how -- what is the possible enrollment?
One student, probably not. Two students,
probably not. But if you’re going up by
10 or 20 students, could result in a
couple hundred thousand more tuition
revenue, we’ll also look at sharing
incremental increases in the size of that
-- that share.
So the contact, Lisa, you
don’t mind standing up, Lisa Wilson,
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Associate Provost for Finance and
Administration, is your contact on that.
And she’ll help any college work through
those, the college and their faculty,
work through what the business plan would
be for that, because we will want a
business plan. We’ll want to know what’s
the potential enrollment.
We share that money for the
first few years, probably three years or
so on a non-recurring basis until the
enrollment is stabilized. In other
words, you put the recurring money, and
we want to make sure it’s going to stay
at those kinds of enrollments. So if you
had a non-recurring for the first roughly
three years or so, and then once those
enrollments stabilize, then it would be a
recurring kind of a share. Does that
help?
JONES: Yes, thank you.
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TRACY: Yes.
MAZUR: Joan Mazur, College of Ed. So
this related question, is there an actual
budget model that speaks to these kind of
dimensions in how we should be
incentivizing our enrollments and the
kinds of things that we discussed at our
last meeting?
We’ve seen many different
things. You know, non-metrics on this,
increases in that. You know,
undergraduate increases and so forth. Is
there a model, as there was, you know,
before the famous new budget model that
had us all scurrying in -- in a non
direction, it appeared now. So is there
an actual budget model that has things as
Dr. Jones was asking about that we can
really -- I mean, it’s very hard to
develop business plans when we really
don’t know where we’re heading and what
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-- what the, you know, what the end game
and what will ultimately be incentivized.
TRACY: So let me talk about two pieces.
And so what we have done is we’ve
retained your incremental budgets for the
colleges. So those incremental budgets,
the ones from the budget last year with
any changes or adjustments by the state.
Let me reiterate that with the budget
reductions of the past spring, only two
colleges had their budget reduced. All
other colleges budgets were maintained
the same even though we had a 4 and a
half percent budget reduction at the
University, or about $12 million.
So there were only two colleges,
and in those cases, one of them was a 1
percent reduction and one was a 2 percent
reduction. We did that through some
reallocations in my office. We took a
million dollars in cuts in my office and
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some reallocations throughout the
University, efficiencies and so forth.
With that said now, a couple of
things. One, so your budgets are
continuing in incremental model, but over
the past two years, we’ve put $5 million
new monies each year into the colleges,
based on roughly enrollments and
enrollment growth, a little bit in
student credit hours, but mostly
enrollment growth at the undergraduate
level, and some parameters around
retention and graduation and under-
represented minorities.
So that is new money. Not what
your budgets are dependent on, but in
other words, it adds to that base for the
incremental that carries over from year
to year. So it is a new -- new monies
added onto that.
Then we have -- to try to
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incentivize on the graduate side,
remember that if we’re paying the tuition
through our tuition scholarships, we’re
already paying that out of university
money so we’re creating a new incentive
for paying Master’s programs so the
colleges have an opportunity to be
entrepreneurial and gain some additional
funds. And that’s what I just described
for Dr. Jones’s question.
So all of your colleges have
those -- those particulars on both of
those programs and I would encourage you
to have your deans present those to you.
They -- they have all the specifics on
that. It’s not a here’s what you have to
do to keep your budget model. It is a
here’s the way to get additional monies
model. And so there are no losers.
There’s only the chance to get additional
funds through that, and we split it
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between the health care colleges or, I’m
sorry, the professional colleges and the
undergraduate because they’re pretty
different in terms of how they -- they
operate. Most of the professional
colleges are totally tuition driven and
so they -- they are -- depend on their
tuition.
We also, as per the deans, we
keep about a million dollars to five
million that I get to allocate based on
where I see pressure points because I --
I can see areas where we need to put
additional funding, and so out of that
five million, I have roughly a million
dollars that I allocate through that.
So there is no model -- you
have to keep your budget, but there’s a
model to gain additional monies, and we
hope next year to have an additional set
of monies. It depends on whether we make
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our targets for our finances for the
University or not, to where we can put
new monies in. So it’s not a -- it’s a
model to keep growing, but again
dependent on being able to generate new
revenues. That’s why, again, retention
becomes so important. You know, every --
let’s see if I can get this right. Every
100 students is going to be about $1.5
million. So if we retain another 100
students, that’s $1.5 million of revenue,
net revenue.
But I’m not -- please don’t take
it I’m putting everything in financial
terms, but retention is a moral
imperative to the student. It’s a
financial imperative for the student, but
it also has a benefit to the university.
So if you think about it, every 100
students is roughly $1.5 million, and so
if we retain at 2 percentage points of
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retention, we’re $1.5 million additional
-- additional monies for the University.
So that’s why we’re -- that’s another
reason why we’re working so hard.
MAZUR: So a quick -- quick follow up.
So if you have an existing master’s
program that meets these requirements for
the 60/40, then -- I mean, are existing
programs in that pool too? You mentioned
new and ones that were offsite. What if
you have an online?
TRACY: Existing or if they are a
substantial increase in the number of
students. If you -- you know, normal
fluctuations of 1, 2, 3 students, but if
you say, we believe there’s a market to
increase by 10 or 15 or 20 students in
this particular master’s program, we will
share that additional revenue with you
based on whether it’s online or
traditional.
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MAZUR: Thank you.
TRACY: We’re trying to get as much
money out to the colleges as we can, but
incentivize good things, hopefully, in
terms of growth where there is a real
need.
MCCORMICK: I’d like to ask a question --
TRACY: Sure.
MCCORMICK: -- people have asked me. How
does the new enrollment management plan
impact retention? So in what
ways -- how would you explain that at a
cocktail party or (inaudible)?
TRACY: So Bob can do it at the
Trustees dinner tonight; that’s a
cocktail party. No, let -- let me walk
you through that again. It’s part of
what I got to touch on it a bit and not
really go into last week because we were
kind of in a hurry or last time we were
here.
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So a couple of things. When you
look at our student population, and let’s
just take the freshman class, first to
second year retention. When it gets to
$5,000 of what we call unmet need, that
is the difference between all in on their
scholarships, their grants, and their
subsidized loans, and the actual bill.
The total cost of attendance, so the room
and board, books, that kind of thing.
When you get to $5,000 of unmet need,
that student retention drops off by 8
absolute percentage points compared to
students with less than $5,000 unmet
need.
When you then go to $10,000 of
unmet need, it is an additional 10
percentage points drop in retention. So
a student with $10,000 unmet financial
need, on average, has an 18 percentage
point lower retention rate. Think about
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that. Our average retention rate is
about 82 percent. For those students,
it’s about 64 percent. That’s a –- I
hope you agree, that’s a substantial
drop.
We then took those numbers and
said, well, of those students who don’t
come back, what are some of their
academic characteristics or at least
their performance? That’s what really
matters, is how they did after one year.
At the end of spring semester and not
coming back this fall, we had -- we had a
class of about 5100, 900 students did not
come back this fall. Nine hundred
students did not come back. Of those
900, 300 of them had a GPA between 3.0
and 4.0. One-third of the students had a
GPA between 3.0 and 4.0, but did not
return. Now, not in every case, but we
then compared those, that block of 300
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students -- by the way, there were 500
plus students who had a GPA above 2.0 and
did not return. Fifty-six percent of our
students who did not return, had a GPA of
above 2.0.
But let’s just take the 3.0
students. Of the students who did come
back with a 3.0 and above, their unmet
financial need was negative $900.
Meaning they had $900 extra. Of the
students who did not come back, their
unmet financial need was $6100. Remember
I said 5,000 is the break point. So you
had 900 students with a 3.0 GPA at the
end of spring semester. This is not
their high school GPA, this is at the end
of two terms, who did not come back. And
the difference between those two was
roughly $7,000, but they had $6100 of
unmet need.
We believe that if we can reduce
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that below the $5,000 mark and get more
of those students, our modeling of past
classes, remember modeling is never
predictive of the future, but it suggests
that our retention would move 4 to 5
percentage points just on that alone.
Our multi-variant linear
regression suggests that unmet financial
need tops out every single time. If not
as the most significant, not close to the
most significant factor in student
retention. Now, that’s not going to get
us all the way to 90 percent, which is
where we want to be. It’s going to take
us part of the way there or put us in the
86 to 87 percent range.
We believe that other activities
through great engagement of all of you,
through student support,
tutoring, those kinds of things, can get
us up to 90, but it’ll take us a good bit
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of the way. So this is really a -- a
scholarshipping program around retention.
And that’s one of the things we want to
do, is make sure that the students we
bring in, you know, folks say, well,
you’re not bringing in the right
students. Well, I would argue if we have
300 students with a GPA over 3.0 and they
didn’t come back, that we did bring in
the right students. Five hundred of
them, above a 2.0. But how can we help
those students succeed? And it only
takes, you know, 100 students is a 2
percentage point difference. Two hundred
students is a 4 percent increase in
retention and that’s where we want to get
to.
So this scholarship program is
about that. It will eventually move the
total amount of need based aid to about
two-thirds for the freshman class or
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about $17 million, still leaving $8
million for merit. So this is not
totally moving away from merit-based aid.
We’ll still be recruiting outstanding
students, as well, but now shifting
because right now, we’re 90 percent merit
and 10 percent need, shifting more to
roughly 65 percent need and 35 percent
merit.
So it is a very significant
shift in strategy. It’s one, though,
that we believe is the right thing for
Kentucky and will do the right thing for
Kentucky’s students, as well as students
from out of state as well.
VISONA: I’m really impressed with --
BROTHERS: Name, please.
VISONA: Monica Visona, Fine Arts.
I’m really impressed with the
way that you’ve been able to
marshal financial data to support a
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position that I think many of us believe
is -- is, in fact, a moral imperative to
provide more education for the student
citizens of Kentucky, whether or not they
are in that upper 100 percent, 10 percent
of the population, in terms of income.
Is there a way that you could perhaps tie
this kind of accessibility to the
population to perhaps some of our
(inaudible) schools?
TRACY: So, yeah. Let -- let’s talk
about that a minute. And I also want to
say that one of the things I did at the
Board of Trustees meeting, and to Mike
Ritchie, as you know he’s the Vice
President for Philanthropy, is I also
challenged him to find us $250 million of
new money for scholarships. And I think
this plays very well with our donors.
And many of them brought themselves up by
their bootstraps and it plays well with
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them.
So we’re also trying to
generate -- that would spin off $10
million a year in scholarship money.
That would allow us to maybe use less
institutional funds, but also to meet
those needs.
As far as the performance-based
funding, I think, you know, that those -
- as Dr. Grossman said, those
conversations are still ongoing. We
believe that retention and graduation is
-- is key. And the degrees conferred.
If we’re going to -- if we’re going to
help Kentucky continue to improve as a
state, we’ve got to have more people
educated, more people with -- with
college degrees. So that’s what we
advocate in those discussions, is that
it’s degrees that matter. Because
ultimately retention and graduation rates
38
lead to degrees.
So we have that in our funding
that I described for the undergraduate
colleges to get additional money, does
include things like, not only enrollment,
but degrees conferred. Particularly,
retention gaps with under represented
minorities, low-income students, you
know, those first generation students
which cut across all demographic
categories are -- are so important and
they’re the ones that are most at risk.
So we’ve tried to provide incentives for
the colleges to close those gaps.
Our teaching plan certainly
says that we’re going to focus on those
things, and we think they’re the right
things, and so we’ve also tried to tie it
to that strategic plan.
GROSSMAN: Can you talk a little bit about
the Graduate School and some of the
39
conversations around the Graduate School
and how those are going to move forward?
TRACY: Sure. So one of the things
that I -- as I spoke to you last time, a
little bit, was one of the three things
we talked about was graduate education
and renewing the focus on graduate
education here at the University of
Kentucky. And one of the pieces that
goes with that is the Graduate School.
And as you know, we’ve been looking at
the structure of the Graduate School and
trying to decide what’s in the right
structure and how much of those functions
should be centralized? How much should
be decentralized? What things are best
done in colleges?
Many of you would probably
argue, justifiably so, that the
recruitment of graduate students probably
happens most at the college level and
40
even at the department level. But you
would also maybe say to me, there’s some
things that are more central like
reaching out to under represented groups
through large conferences and so forth.
There’s a data reporting and --
and sort of big acquisition of reporting
function that maybe is best done
centrally through some kind of mechanism
because we have to, you know, record many
of those things for CPE, as well as SACS,
and that probably has to be coordinated
some way.
But what I don’t know is how
best to support graduate education until
we have the discussion around graduate
education. I want the two to be aligned
together. I’d prefer not to realign the
graduate school and then say, well, that
was great except it really doesn’t fit
with how we want to (inaudible)
41
undergraduate education, and so I’m
hoping that’s a broader campus like
conversation.
We had a long and good
discussion with Senate Council a week or
two ago about how to carry out that
process, and I think that we’ve come up
with a good process to do that that
engages the campus community, but also
has a group leading that. I really -- I
don’t want to be the only person leading
this charge and I think there’s -- that
they’ve put together a blue ribbon panel
to do that.
But I would hope that as a
consequence of that, we would have a way
to best align the graduate school or
whatever entity that comes out to be.
What I -- what I am passionate about, I
guess maybe I’m giving sort of my
prejudices. And I’ll state –- if I say
42
I’m biased up front, it’s a conscious
bias, right, I guess. What I really want
is for the Graduate School and the -- the
-- whatever that is and that leader to be
the champion of graduate education on
campus and really serve as a person that
champions it across campus and works in
what I call a triangular function with
the Provost and Vice President for
Research, because I think the graduate --
graduate education has such a close
linkage with the educational mission of
the University, but also with the
research mission of the University. So
those three really have to be in -- in a
coordinated fashion, and I would hope
that that position would move beyond
record keeping and data reporting, but to
be a true champion and help facilitate
graduate education across campus. In
that way, it’s my bias.
43
We’ll see how that turns out,
but that’s my own personal bias, is to
really elevate the distinction of
graduate education on campus and align
that unit to best do that. (Inaudible).
CHENG: Yang-Tse Cheng, Chemical and
Materials Engineering.
When I asked a question about
retention, I heard a lot about -- the
case about how we improve
retention, but one factor is not
discussed is the rule of family and
friend. I know there are a lot of
privacy concerns of getting -- reporting
to parents or...?
TRACY: Yeah, so you ask a good
question and let me -- let me comment on
that. You’re right. And so let’s take
that from several levels. Let’s take
first the first generation who may have a
very supportive and passionate family,
44
but has not had the experiences that
maybe we have and could really help our
students (inaudible). So how do we give
them a support system here that helps
complement their family in that way?
But we’re also working to reach
out more through the parents association,
but also to communicate more prior to
their joining the University so that they
know what resources they have available
so they can call us and say, you know, my
student seems to be having problems.
Now, obviously a student
doesn’t have to sign the FERPA release
and we can’t tell the parent a whole lot
beyond that, but what we can do is
proactively give them tools and give them
resource contacts so that they can help
us through that process. So we’re also
working through the parents association
and trying to expand that quite a bit, so
45
that they parents have an opportunity to
participate and for those who may have
parents who did not have the opportunity
to come to college, that they know that
we have resources here to help those
students here with that transition.
That’s why in Washington last
week when I was meeting with congressmen
and senators, I -- I lobbied for year-
round PELL. You know the PELL program
right now is an important program. It’s
sitting on a $6 billion surplus and a lot
of legislators would like to use that for
something else, and I understand the
attractiveness of that. But what I
argued for was to go to a year-round
PELL, because right now we’re only
(inaudible) during the academic year.
And without that, students who maybe want
to come in for a summer transition
program into college, they can’t use PELL
46
money for that. Or if they want to catch
up at the end of the first year, they
can’t use PELL money for that and so it
creates a tremendous financial burden on
those students.
So we will continue to advocate
and we’ve gotten good contacts through --
we used seven different legislators last
week and every one of them was receptive
to that and we’ve offered to work with
them as we go into the higher education
re-authorization process to argue for
PELL at least going year round. And I
would love to have it expanded, but I’ll
settle for year round right now. But it
also fits many of the
things you’re talking about, is making
sure that our students have the greatest
flexibility in the use of that money.
We have 5475 students on PELL
here at the University of Kentucky.
47
Twenty-eight percent of our Kentuckians
entering into freshman class are PELL
eligible and that total bill for those
5475 students is $23 million annually.
So PELL is a very important program for
us.
REGARD: Michael Regard, College of
Public Health.
(Inaudible) talking about
retention in general as sort of a broad
basis for students, but as he said when
we move away from the merit-based aid to
need-based aid, will of course sort of be
cuts in that area. I know this year
alone, the Singletary scholarship program
was cut with the amount of funding
students get, as well as the number of
scholarships given out, while also
increasing the requirements to get the
scholarships. And after discussing with
the people (inaudible) advisor, they’ve
48
had an issue with at least retaining
those students as well as getting the
sort of students they would like to come
to UK. A lot of the students who are
alternates.
I was wondering if there’s any
conversation in your office on
how to retain those students while there
are less scholarships, so they’re more
competitive, while also diminishing their
value? How the university is going to
address getting those high achieving,
high caliber students at the University?
TRACY: So the entering class of this
fall, we did reduce the number of
Singletarys by 20. We did not reduce the
award size. The award size stayed the
same. We did reduce the number by about
20 students. So that was not changed. I
can’t say that that won’t happen
eventually in the future, but this year
49
we did not change that.
A couple of other things I
believe, but maybe I’m idealistic, but
I’ll say that I think the Lewis Honors
College and the tremendous opportunities
it has provides an opportunity to attract
those very high performing students as
well. But I also -- from my experience
in enrollment management, sense that
those high-end students also want to go
to places with 90 percent first and
second year retention rates and 70
percent graduation rates.
There’s also a factor in there
that says this is a -- at least a
surrogate measure of quality. And so we
will continue to recruit those students
very hard, but we also know that we have
not been as successful in the students
with the 26 to 32 ACT range as we would
like to be and there are a lot of
50
students in that range that we believe we
can attract as well. So all of our
modeling suggests that the ACT will go up
and that the GPA will go up of the
entering class.
We will (inaudible) we have
fewer merit finalists because those
students, they’re looking for that full
ride where -- where they can get it, and
so we will probably have fewer of those.
But we believe that the overall quality
of the class will look up.
VISONA: This is actually -- I’m saying
this because we’ve (inaudible)
conversation. This is Monica Visona,
Fine Arts.
Just a question about the
upcoming discussions on issues that were
raised by the elections. I’m -- in the
College of Fine Arts, I’m in the
Humanities, so I really worry about
51
having two points of view, or both sides.
I would really like to have panels of
experts with many different approaches to
solving the problems (inaudible) face our
University, face our community and face
our world.
I think one of the really
upsetting aspects of the election was
that there was a polarization according
to personality rather than to solution
based discussions.
TRACY: I think that -- I think that
should have been -- thank you for that
reminder. Multiple points of view, just
not one point of view. I think we agree
on that, yes. I would -- if we get a
panel with four different points of view
and it represents the range, I’m happy,
very happy.
Katherine has asked me to speak
a little bit more about my -- our time in
52
Washington. Tom Harris is here. Tom
Harris was with us in Washington. We
spent -- Monday and Tuesday, we
interviewed with the Inside Higher Ed and
the Chronicle of Higher Education. You
may have seen the President’s video on
the Chronicle’s website. There hopefully
will be an article coming out of Inside
Higher Ed sometime. We’re providing them
with more information. They were very
interested in the UK LEAD scholarship
program, so is the Chronicle as well.
And we saw that mentioned in -- in the
video as well. So that was Monday.
On Tuesday, then, we had the
great fortune of being in the Senate
chamber when Senator McConnell gave his
speech about the 21st Century Cures Act.
If you know about that, it has primarily
three -- four components. We’ll say
four. One is precision medicine. One is
53
a cancer moon shot called the Beau Biden
Cancer Initiative after Vice President
Biden’s son, who died of brain cancer. A
piece of it is reforming -- reforming
legislation around the FDA and getting
drugs approved faster.
And the fourth part is very
pertinent to us and that is on opioid
abuse and the tremendous problem in the
country. And I would say -- we -- we
certainly said to our legislators and we
didn’t have to convince them that we were
at the epicenter. And there will be $500
million a year for two years for opioid
abuse. We, at the university, want to
position ourselves for that money.
We got to hear Senator
McConnell’s speech, which you know that
it later went on to pass, we -- we
advocated all the way up to 2:00 when the
vote was. We were -- we were actually
54
with Senator Paul and he had to leave us,
and the last thing we said to him was
vote for it and he did, luckily. And so
all of our legislators did vote for that
piece of legislation. It’s quite
significant for I think the country, but
also for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and
the University of Kentucky.
So our two primary points that
we made during that effort were the PELL
grants that I just described and the 21st
Century Cures Act, which again, should
have some significant research dollars.
That’s a big plus NIH and biomedical
research.
So when you go to Washington,
you have to pick your spots. You have to
be very, very strategic and you can’t
have 50 topics that you discuss with
legislators. But I -- I think it was a
successful visit and we do that every
55
year, and periodically throughout the
year, as well.
Okay. Well thank you all. I’m
going to head out to the Board meeting.
So thank you and, again, have a happy
holiday.
MCCORMICK: All right. So we have old
business. It was fun, right? And we
apologize to Scott and (inaudible). We
had this on our agenda last time and we
didn’t --
YOST: It happens. It’s not a problem
from our standpoint. I appreciate you
having us back.
Real quick, we had a proposal
that was -- came before the Senate last
November, which was November, last month.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be here (inaudible).
I appreciate Kevin doing that for the
committee.
This proposal is basically a
56
change in the College of Health Sciences
Clinical and Leadership Management major.
They basically -- they have two tracts.
A -- that is a tract in associate’s
degree to entry to the degree and then
the entry level for degree, and they made
some changes in those two tracts and then
they added a third tract. And the third
tract and basically the long-term care
administration specifically with the
health services executive dealing with
long-term care issues.
So besides the changes that
dealt with a couple of courses in the
pre-major, a capstone rework, a capstone
course, some issues, and then this new
tract dealing with the anticipated need
as the population ages, and specifically
in Kentucky as our populations age and
having people to be able to work in that
area as administrators and help lead the
57
effort as, again, the demographic shifts
going on.
And then the -- it went before
the committee, went before the Senate
Council. The Senate Council actually
asked for a modification of this prior to
coming here. So you have the current
proposal. And that was that the major, I
guess, challenge was they wanted to also
raise the admission requirements. The
Senate Council specifically voted that
down and sent it back to committee.
And so the one change, if you
happened to see this, some of you had
happened (inaudible) from before. The
one, I guess, significant change to the
proposal before it came here, and that
was instead of a change in the admissions
requirements, they basically made it the
-- added an ongoing requirement for
student performance as they matriculate
58
through the program. Am I correct in
saying all those things?
And so with that, it comes
before you and regards this program
change. Again, the structure of the
courses and then adding this new tract.
And that new tract actually has three or
four specific courses that are going to
be tied to that particular health
services executive for long-term care.
Anything else you want to add to that?
UNIDENTIFIED: No, I think you’ve covered it
well. Be happy to answer questions.
YOST: And so with that, the proposal
comes from the committee so it doesn’t
need a second, but any questions or any
comments before we go to vote?
MCCORMICK: The motion from the committee is
that the Senate approve the proposed
changes to the BHS in Clinical Leadership
and Management. You have this
59
information as a part of your packet.
Any discussion? Again, the Senate
approve proposed changes in the Bachelor
of Health Science in Clinical Leadership
and Management. Please vote. It passes.
YOST: Thank you.
MCCORMICK: Margaret.
SCHROEDER: This is a motion from the
committee that the Senate approve the
submission -- suspension of admission
into the BS in International Studies in
the College of Arts and Sciences.
This one is kind of a cleanup
thing. They modified the BA program with
the intent of deleting the BS tract. It
didn’t get deleted. Now, it’s finally
getting deleted. The BA tract does still
exist. It’s the best route for the
students. There’s no students in the BS
tract. Is there any questions?
MCCORMICK: The motion from the committee is
60
that the Senate approve the suspension of
admission into the BS in
International Studies in the College of
Arts and Sciences. No questions? There
again is the motion to approve the
suspension of admission into the Bachelor
of Science in International Studies in
the College of Arts and Sciences. Please
vote. Motion passes.
We have a number of In Memoriam
recipients or at least nominations to you
and we’ll begin with the College of
Education. Dr. Crystal is here to share
the College’s nomination.
CRYSTAL: Ralph Crystal (inaudible),
Special Education and Rehabilitation
Council. I am here to present Barbara
Slevin, who is deceased. She died
November 9th, 2015. She was in the
doctoral program in special education.
She had started that program in 2003, had
61
been attending on a part-time basis
because she was working, employed full
time.
She had previously completed a
specialist degree in I think it was 1997
-- or 1989 and established a
rehabilitation program in this community,
which was very successful and thriving,
and decided to return to doctoral work,
which was in 2003 and was going --
attending part-time, and was just at the
point of taking qualifying exams when she
became ill at the last of classes in the
spring of 2013, as I said, died a year
ago, November 2015. I am presenting and
recommending that she be -- I’m not
certain what the wording is, but awarded
an in memoriam doctoral degree.
MCCORMICK: So the motion from the Senate
Council is that the elected faculty
senators approve this College of
62
Education student as the recipient of an
In Memorial Honorary Degree for
submission through the President to the
Board of Trustees. Questions? It is so
motioned. Let’s vote.
College of Nursing has three.
(Inaudible).
HEATH: So this one is Courtney Meyers.
She died in the fall, 2014. Courtney was
just beginning her nursing career as a
first semester nursing student when she
lost her life in an automobile accident.
Her friends described her as thoughtful
and quiet.
She was finding her way into
nursing’s role and was already showing
the kindness, competence, and compassion
that are important as her academic
ability was as well. Courtney leaves
behind her parents and a brother and a
sister.
63
MCCORMICK: So the motion from the Senate
Council is that the elected faculty
senators approve this College of Nursing
student as the recipient of an In
Memorial Honorary Degree for submission
through the President to the Board of
Trustees. Any questions? Please vote.
This is approved.
HEATH: The second student is Ross
McCoy. He died in March of this year.
Ross was also in his first semester of
nursing when he died from health
complications. It had been his dream to
come to the University of Kentucky from
Pikeville since he was a little boy and
he was excited about becoming a nurse.
In fact, he turned down a full ride
scholarship for football at Georgetown to
earn a University of Kentucky nursing
degree.
He is a product of the coal
64
community of Eastern Kentucky. Ross
understood loyalty to family and friends.
The consensus of his friends, his
faculty, his classmates, was he was there
for you. Ross was an only child, and in
addition to his parents, is survived by
his beloved grandfather (inaudible).
MCCORMICK: It’s the motion from the Senate
Council that the elected faculty senators
approve this College of Nursing student
as the recipient of an In Memorial
Honorary Degree for submission through
the President to the Board of Trustees.
This is the motion. You will vote
please. Thanks. Motion passes.
HEATH: And finally the third student is
Shawn Alexander. Shawn died in May of
this year. He was a second degree
student that was pursuing nursing
following a significant military service
as a medic and also as a career in
65
teaching with a Master’s degree in
Education. He lost his life in a
motorcycle accident during finals week.
It didn’t take much time with
Shawn to see that he was passionate about
people. He noticed who did what and was
quick to show appreciation. He
engineered recognition for the custodians
of our building who clean our building
every day. He presented them with
flowers and cards signed by many students
at the end of the semester. Faculty and
classmates were also recipient to this
kindness and care. The movie title, Band
of Brothers, comes to mind with the
description of how Shawn related to his
classmates, in particular, our veteran
students. Shawn is survived by his
mother, two siblings, his wife and two
daughters.
MCCORMICK: The motion for the Senate is
66
that the elected faculty senators approve
this College of Nursing student as the
recipient of an In Memorial Honorary
Degree for submission through the
President to the Board of Trustees.
Please vote. Motion passes. This is a
request from the College of Arts and
Science. (Inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED: The College of Arts and Sciences
is requesting the awarding of an In
Memoriam degree to Seth Mulcahy. Seth
was a veteran in his military service in
the US Army, including a tour in
Afghanistan.
On completion of his military
service, Seth entered UK as an English
major with the goal of becoming a
journalist. At the time of his death
last July, he was a registered student in
good standing and so meets the criteria
for an In Memoriam degree.
67
MCCORMICK: The motion is that the elected
faculty senators approve this College of
Arts and Science student as the recipient
of an In Memorial Honorary Degree for
submission through the President to the
Board of Trustees. Here you see that
motion again. Please vote. Motion
passes.
Now we have the larger vote
which is our motion that the elected
faculty senators approve the December
2016 list of candidates for credentials
for submission to the Senate and then
through the President to the Board of
Trustees. Submitting this to you where
you see our motion and ask you to vote.
Thank you. All right. Margaret.
SCHROEDER: So a couple of these are older.
They don’t have the rationales that you
all requested, but the others have
rationales. So just bear with me while I
68
read the rationale for the first couple.
This motion is a recommendation
that the Senate approve the establishment
of a new undergraduate certificate,
International Film Studies in the
Department of Modern and Classical
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in
the College of Arts and Sciences. The
purpose of the certificate is to enter
students in a systematic way to the
history and theoretical vocabulary of
cinema to provide a comparative approach
through which students may reflect upon
the nature problematic concept of
national film styles and their relation
to each other in an increasingly
globalized world and to foster expertise
in film analysis and its expression.
It’s a highly interdisciplinary
program that will allow students to bring
the knowledge they have gathered in home
69
departments to bear on their work in film
studies. It will appeal to students in
numerous programs including English,
NCLLC, Hispanic Studies, History,
Philosophy, Social Theory, Fine Arts,
Design Communications, and so forth.
It emphasizes (inaudible) but
context how the language of film and
intersects with closely related movements
and other artistic media in philosophy
and history and different cultural
traditions. They anticipate adding 10
students each year to the program. Are
there any questions? Yes.
FARRELL: I do have a question. Herman
Farrell, College of Fine Arts.
I haven’t really heard about
this proposal. I know the folks involved
and it seems like a great proposal. But
I guess I would ask, how would this in
the future relate to perhaps a film
70
making, film production or film producing
program here in the university, as well
as film writing?
PETERS: Jeff Peters, Arts and Sciences,
author of this proposal.
That’s an excellent question;
something we’ve talked about, the people
who were involved in -- faculty members
were involved in this. This proposed
certificate are not specialists in the
area of production. So it’s something
that we’ve talked about that could be
crossed over with the College of
Communication, for example, where there
are courses in production there.
There’s a little bit of overlap
with some of the people in word writing
rhetoric (inaudible) who do a little bit
of documentary film production, as I
understand it. But for the moment, this
is a -- a purely scholarly proposal. But
71
it’s the kind of thing that would be --
that -- that would absolutely work
perfectly well in conjunction with such a
future program.
SCHROEDER: Are there any other questions?
Yes.
VISONA: Monica Visona, Fine Arts.
What -- why was the decision or
could you perhaps just explain really
briefly why a certificate rather than a
minor?
PETERS: Yes. Excellent question.
That’s also something we talked about.
It had to do mainly with not being
required to ask for new resources. This
is a program that allows us to combine
the existing film courses into an
undergraduate certificate.
I think one of the things that
we say in the proposal that was not read
just now, is that we’re the only
72
university among our 19 benchmarks who
has currently no program whatsoever in
film. Most of our 19 benchmarks have at
least minors. Most of them have majors
and at least half of them have Ph.D.
programs, and, you know, devoted faculty
in those departments. So we thought that
it was a good idea to start, as well,
basically, and not have to ask for
faculty hires, for example. That’s the
thing.
CHENG: Yang-Tse Cheng, Chemical and
Materials Engineering.
A family friend, their daughter
got a film degree in another university
which has a program already, but it’s
very difficult to find a job. What is
the likelihood these 10 students with
this certificate will -- will find a job?
PETERS: Well, first of all, it’s not 10
students. It’s 10 students each year,
73
right?
CHENG: (Inaudible).
PETERS: I’m sorry?
CHENG: So they are larger than
some engineering programs.
PETERS: Perhaps. Perhaps, yeah. I mean
–- right. This is a -- this is a
Humanities major. This is a -- the --
the student with a certificate,
undergraduate certificate in
International Film Studies first of all,
doesn’t have a degree, but that’s a
certificate that gets added to whatever
degree they’re in. But this is a
Humanities degree, so they have the same
kind of skills that students in other
humanities majors develop over the course
of four years, having to do with critical
thinking, articulate self-expression in
writing and speaking, and all together
qualities that we pick so importantly in
74
humanities and throughout all majors at
the University of Kentucky.
SCHROEDER: Undergraduate certificates just
kind of add the feather to the cap, a
little bit more knowledge and background
in your -- in addition to your major.
PETERS: It did actually occur to me that
we could probably pretty quickly move to
a proposal for a minor, but given what it
took to get this through, I don’t see
that happening.
VISONA: Monica Visona, again.
I’m actually the outgoing
director of the certificate,
undergraduate Certificate for Global
Studies, and we have had significant
problems in terms of support, in that I
was taking over the directorship
essentially as an overload. And it is --
there’s been quite a lot of discussion
about who administered undergraduate
75
certificates. And the person who was
currently my administrative assistant is
now doing so only as a result of like
groveling on my part. I’m not really
sure that the undergraduate certificate
is that much more viable than a minor or
that it will require any fewer resources.
PETERS: Yeah, that -- that may be. I
don’t think we’re going to have any
trouble -- I personally don’t think we’re
going to have any trouble overseeing this
and supervising this program. I’m going
to be the first director for it if it
gets past today, first two years. And,
you know, the faculty that I’ve been in
touch with as we’ve put this proposal
forward all seem to be very willing to
serve in this position in the future.
MCCORMICK: Any other questions? The motion
from the –-
SACHS: Leon Sachs, Arts and Sciences.
76
One thing that sometimes gets lost in
these conversations that I think it might
be worth adding, since I know a little
bit of the history of this, is this is
really coming from students who want some
coherence to what they are doing anyway.
Students have been clamoring for this for
a long, long time and finally have a way
to acknowledge the -- the coherence.
Like I said, the integrity of what they
have been pursuing on their own.
PETERS: Yeah, what they actually want is
a major. But, you know, as I said we’re
starting small.
MCCORMICK: Yes.
ALLAIRE: Just a comment. Gloria Allaire
in Arts and Sciences, coincidentally
NCCLC, as well.
The idea of studying film takes
me back to the ‘70s when I was an
undergrad at Madison, Wisconsin, which
77
was a major film studies school, and I do
recall my own undergraduate response when
a roommate announced she was going to
take a film studies course and we all
mocked her for thinking lame.
But film studies discussion in
this day and age is extremely vital. It
goes beyond simple literature. It’s
using language. It’s using culture. It
engages students in ways that reading on
page doesn’t, and with all the visuals
out there in their lives, this is no
better time to be learning to analyze and
think critically about the images they’re
seeing.
Film studies teaches you
structure, philosophy, theory, as well as
international cultures and using
language, if you are listening to and
watching films in a foreign language with
subtitles admittedly. But it exposes
78
students to the greater world like
nothing else. Thank you.
MCCORMICK: Thank you. The motion from the
committee is that the Senate approve the
establishment of a new undergraduate
Certificate in International Film Studies
in the Department of Modern and Classical
Languages, Literature, and Culture within
the College of Arts and Sciences. We’ve
had discussion. Here’s the motion again
if you need to read it. And I’ll ask for
your vote. Thank you. The motion
passes.
SCHROEDER: The next one is a motion that
the Senate approve for submission to the
Board of Trustees the establishment of
the new -- of a new Ph.D. in Radiation
and Radiological Sciences in the
Department of Radiation Medicine within
the College of Medicine.
The rationale for the program is
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on the front page of the packet, so
hopefully you’ve read it. The only thing
that I would point to you here that’s a
little bit different than our previous
Ph.D. programs is that there’s three
routes to admission. The first is the
traditional route of having obtained a
master’s and going into the Ph.D.
program. The second is you enter the
program to earn your BS, earn your
master’s (inaudible). And then the
third, and it has been approved by Brian
Jackson, is they currently have an MS
degree that if a student decides before
the end of their first year, before the
end of their spring semester of their
first year that they wish to switch to
the Ph.D. program, they are allowed to
switch to the Ph.D. program taking that
program course work with them and
finishing up in the Ph.D. program earning
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the master’s (inaudible) along the way.
Are there any questions? Okay. Great.
MCCORMICK: Hearing no questions. The
motion from the committee is that the
Senate approve for submission to the
Board of Trustees the establishment of
the new Ph.D. in Radiation and
Radiological Sciences in the Department
of Radiation Medicine within the College
of Medicine. Now having heard this
twice, you can see it, and we’ll ask you
to vote. The motion passes.
SCHROEDER: So this is for the undergraduate
certificate in Social Sciences Research.
It’s an undergraduate certificate. It
will be housed within the College of Arts
and Sciences. It’s interdisciplinary and
involves a lot of other colleges, as
well.
If you’re wanting to see how
specifically it might play out because
81
they’re so many different options, in the
first appendices in the proposal, there
is different majors or different student
options on how it may play out in their
program. It’s very flexible for the
student and they hope that it helps to
encourage more students to do social
science research. Are there any
questions?
MCCORMICK: I thought these proposers did a
great job of reaching out to almost
anyone it seemed on campus. It’s very
collaborative, and I don’t know how long
it took. That would be another question.
UNIDENTIFIED: Much too long.
MCCORMICK: Much too long. The motion from
Margaret’s committee is that the
University Senate approve the
establishment of the new undergraduate
certificate in Social Science Research in
the College of Arts and Sciences, and
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again it enjoys broad support and
collaboration. Here’s the motion.
Please vote. The motion passes. All
right.
SCHROEDER: Our final one is the Graduate
Certificate in High Performance Coaching
from the Department of Kinesiology and
Health Promotion within the College of
Education. It’s a pretty traditional
graduate certificate. There is nothing
funky here or anything like that. It’s a
very high and popular field, if you’ve
read the rationale on the front of the
page, and it’s also a collaborative in
College of Health Sciences. There was no
noted overlap and all (inaudible)
supported the program. Are there any
questions?
MCCORMICK: So the motion from the committee
is that the Senate approve the
establishment of a new Graduate
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Certificate in High Performance Coaching
in the Department of Kinesiology and
Health Promotion within the College of
Education. And you see the motion here.
I ask for you to vote. Thank you. The
motion passes.
All right. Our next item comes
from Roger Brown and the Committee on
Distance Learning and eLearning.
BROWN: So the lion’s share of the work
around here is done by 18 standing
committees. Those are the Senate
committees and that’s who gets up here
and does reports, and the Senate Rules
articulate and describe these committees
strangely in two different sections. And
depending on which section your committee
is described in, that determines the
criteria of who can be the chair and what
percent of the members must be elected
faculty senators, namely, whether it’s a
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majority or not.
So three years ago, the Senate
created the most recent Committee on
Distance Learning and eLearning, and I’ve
been the chair of that committee for a
couple of years now. And it turns out
that whenever we have work to do in this
committee -- I know this is similar in
other committees, it takes a long time,
and so we’ve run into some situations
where it would be nice if the chair of
that committee could be a more stable
person rather than have to switch up with
the needs of the elected senate --
senator stats.
And so what we have is a
proposal today simply to move the
language from the section that requires
the chair to be an elected faculty
senator and a majority of the members to
be elected faculty senators to the
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section that does away with that
requirement.
And there’s one other change,
which is just to clarify, this particular
committee, it looks like, could have had
one member from every college that has a
distance learning program, and if you
know of anything that’s happened in the
last little bit, is that that’s become
something that a lot of colleges have
done. So, therefore, the committee
membership gets really big, and so we
just ask that we clarify that, like all
the other committees, there are
membership recommendations from that
committee to Senate Council and then
Senate Council decides who is going to be
chair and who the members are. And so
they could decide that they want a
majority to be faculty -- I mean, elected
faculty senators. They could decide that
86
they want the chair to be that. It just
does away with that as a requirement.
MCCORMICK: Any questions for Roger? So,
again, this is I think really a move to
recognize the more inclusive nature of
this work. This committee began as ad
hoc and now we really would like for it
to be a -- a group that could be broader
than senators only.
So the motion is that the
University Senate approve the proposed
changes to Senate Rule 1.4.2.13
and Senate Rule 1.4.3. Roger has
described the action. We do have the
motion again. You can read it. And I
ask you to vote. Motion passes. Thank
you, Roger.
So you remember last year we
charged a group of faculty as when we
approved the -- the Honors College, to
begin the work of this -- what it might
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look like, what the structure might be.
At that time, if you remember,
the proposal was fairly loose because the
proposers wanted a broader body to have a
time to really think carefully about the
organization and about the curriculum and
about the way the -- the student should
look in terms of their initiative, as
well as their matriculation and
graduation.
And so we’re very appreciative
of Phil Harling to take -- take this
task. He’s the chair of that transition
committee and he has some things to talk
with us today. We’d like for you to
think about it, think about it over the
holiday, I’m sure. As you’re trimming
the tree, think a little bit about Honors
College and -- or engage in other holiday
celebrations and then we’ll come back to
this at -- in the spring. Thanks, Phil.
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HARLING: Thank you so much, Katherine.
Thank you, senators, for the opportunity
to begin sharing with you the work of the
Honors Transition Committee.
We’ve been at it all semester.
We started meeting in July. So how do I
advance this thing?
BROTHERS: Clicker to the right.
HARLING: Thank you. We were dealing with
a nine point charge initially from the
Senate Academic -- the Senate Committee
on Academic Structure and Organization.
We added one sort of broader ballistic
charge point to that. We were charged by
Provost Tracy back in July. We’ve been
meeting actually weekly pretty much since
then. I’m pleased to say that we
delivered our report to -- to Katherine
and to Ernie last Friday. So a big shout
out to the 18 members of our committee
from 10 colleges. I think some of them
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are here in the room. Could you guys
stand and just allow yourself to be
acknowledged? This is a huge task and
thank you all for being here with us this
afternoon. So the report is in full and
ready for you to -- to review at your
leisure.
As Katherine indicated, we
started out as a committee by sort of
asking ourselves what we want honor
students to be and to become as a result
of their experience in the Lewis Honors
College, and several things came to mind,
broad intellectual curiosity beyond their
major course of study. People who are
interdisciplinary by way of -- of
approach in thinking, but certainly by
the time they graduate, able to
appreciate (inaudible) on the world quite
different from what they might typically
get, again, within their major. Skilled
researchers within their majors,
90
obviously, is something we found very
important. And by no means last or
least, interest in cultivated young
people who possess a common moral
imagination and a commitment to lifelong
learning. So these were some of the
guiding principles we took as we were
dealing with the Senate’s charge to kind
of map a curricular blueprint, as it
were, for how the Lewis Honors College
should move forward.
And I would also like us to
envision what we’d like to see the Lewis
Honors College look more like in five or
ten years, hopefully, as a result of some
of the curricular changes that we are
proposing.
One is considerably broader
faculty participation across the breadth
of UK’s wide campus. Now,
historically the Honors Program at UK was
-- was relatively very small compared to
91
the broader size of the institution.
That was true for probably a good 40 plus
years of its existence. It recently
celebrated its 50th birthday.
(Inaudible) over the last ten years
(inaudible) you’ve seen a great
(inaudible) enlargement of the college.
Now, plus the 10 percent of undergraduate
student body are students within the
Honors College, getting close to 2000
students at -- at this point.
Over the last ten years, there
has been this enormous growth in the
student population. What’s lagged
behind, I think, a little bit is faculty
participation in instruction, and there
are all sorts of compelling reasons for
why that is so. Many of them -- many of
them we hope we’ve addressed as part of
our report. But we would like to see
broader participation among the faculty
broadly. Particularly, in the larger
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undergraduate colleges, which at the
moment, are relatively under represented
in the rank -- in the typical ranks of
honors and structures as you count from
semester to semester.
We would also like to see the
Lewis Honors College become a place that
is seen as an incubator from the teaching
ideas. In other words, a place where
perhaps one can experiment with a new
course idea which then can be retrofitted
fairly readily back into one’s regular
departmental (inaudible). I think that
has been kind of a perception in the
recent past that you go off to teach in
honors, you do something special there.
It doesn’t necessarily add any value to
the departmental curriculum. That’s
something that as a former associate
dean, a former interim dean in the
College of Arts and Sciences, I
appreciate that as a critique. I
93
certainly would like to see the Lewis
Honors College become a place where good
ideas come to thrive and to go back to --
and to be imbedded within the broader
curriculum of the University.
The committee also would like to
see a richer variety of honor seminars
and of dedicated honors sections of
established departmental course
offerings. If you look at honors
colleges that we aspire to be more like,
they typically have a great many more of
both than -- than you see within the
current Honors College at UK. So, again,
this is kind of partly to do with growing
pains over -- over the past dozen years
or so.
There’s a particular (inaudible)
of honor sections have established
departmental courses at the 100, 200
levels. I’ve been busy trying to
gradually build that up and that’s
94
something that requires revisiting when
you build up a teaching schedule every
years. So this is very much a work in
progress. This is something that I hope
my successor, the permanent dean, will --
will continue to undertake, but we
identified this as a value that we want
to underline as a committee.
So the meat of our charge was to
suggest a blueprint, a roadmap as it
were, for building the current 21 credit
honors curriculum up to a 30 credit
honors curriculum, and our goal here was
to add an element of common curricular
experience, which the current honors
program does not have, while maintaining
the flexibility which is a hallmark of
our honors curriculum. And I think
that’s one reason why it’s been fairly
attractive to (inaudible) students who
make up the majority of our honor
students.
95
So you can take -- you can be a
major in a relatively credit intensive
area, such as engineering, and readily
meet the 21 hour requirement. We are
trying to build that to 30 hours in a way
that upholds the spirit of flexibility,
while adding a degree of curricular rigor
and something that we think has been
noticeable by its absence, and that is a
common experience and better within the
-- the honors curriculum.
So there you see the current
curriculum, which is a fairly broad
smorgasbord, of -- of -- of six credits
of lower level honors courses that meet
core requirements. A mirror twin of six
credits of upper level honors courses.
Six credits of honors experiences that
can be met in a variety of different ways
so there’s imbedded flexibility in that.
And then finally three credits of honors
capstone, which is typically addressed
96
within the student’s major. We’re not
looking to change any of that. We’re
simply looking to -- to add to that core,
that flexible core.
And what the transition
committee is recommending is that first
of all to build up to 24 credits, we take
the WRD/CIS 112, that is a combined
communications and composition course,
which is an accelerated version of the --
the comp and (inaudible) course that
other UK students have to take to meet
their graduation requirements. It would
make this an obligation and make this a
requirement among all honors students.
Now, this is something that is
relatively easy to -- to undertake in the
sense that the vast majority of honors
students already take either a -- either
CIS 112 or WRD 112. In fact, no
additional staffing resources would be
needed to make this a mandatory
97
requirement for all of our honor
students. So that builds us up to 24
credits.
Next, we thought that we wanted
to sort of encourage breadth,
intellectual breadth among our honor
students. And so to that end, to get us
up to 27 credits, the transition
committee is recommending a -- what we
call a directed elective, which is to say
a course either a special topics honor
student (inaudible) or departmental
honors course, which the student would
take outside their major area of study.
So, in other words, the intent here is
that if you’re a Social Science major, to
meet the directive elective, you would
take this additional three credits above,
over and above the core, probably either
in the Humanities or the Natural
Sciences.
And the idea is that honors
98
advisors would meet with students. We
have a great deal of advising muscle in
the Honors College and we have resources
from the (inaudible) to add to that
advising staff, to be able to steer
students in directions that are going to
broaden them intellectually while they
continue to meet their requirements
within their major. So that takes us up
to 27 credit hours with the directive
elective.
Finally, we thought it very
important that we recommend a common
curricular experience for all honor
students within the Lewis Honors College.
This is something which is quite typical
across honors colleges that we aspire to
be more like, which is to say, most of
them that account for more than 21 credit
hours. It’s very typical for there to be
one, or in some cases, a two-course honor
seminar. Often this is something that
99
the students will take in their freshman
year.
What we are recommending in
order to maintain a necessary modicum of
flexibility for students in relatively
described majors, is that they meet this
foundational seminar, three credits only,
sometime before the end of their second
year of matriculating within the honors
program so that engineering students,
biology students, wouldn’t necessarily
have to take that course right out of the
starting gate.
What we envision for the honors
seminar is, again, kind of a variation on
something which is fairly common in
honors colleges and that is a course that
really looks at the deliberately very
broad theme of the relationship between
the individual and society, and we would
do that through a series of guided
readings, close reading, a lot of
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writing. Probably a 20 page minimum with
-- with a rewrite requirement imbedded
within it, because we want to make sure
that our honors students are terrific
writers by the time they pass on to upper
classman status here at UK.
The idea is that we would
examine this broad theme through the
traditional divisions of knowledge; the
humanistic component, the social
scientific component, and the natural
sciences component. So sort of a tri-
partheid dimension of the -- of the
curriculum.
There would be a common reading
list as we envision it. Maybe 60 to 75
percent of the readings assigned would be
common readings arrived at as a result of
the faculty committee work, with the
individual instructors having some
autonomy to add readings up to maybe on
the order of 25 to 30 percent of the
101
overall total for the course.
We thought it would be terrific
if we could introduce each of these three
broad units in this examination of the
relationship between the individual and
society by having a UK faculty member
give an evening lecture to the entire
student body of the Honors College,
really kind of driving home how within
their disciplinary frame of reference
they envision this relationship as a way
of kicking out this broad unit and making
it a sort of co-curricular dimension
(inaudible) intellectual. Something that
-- that, you know, we’re not, in my
opinion, we don’t really have enough of
in the current manifestation of the
honors program here at UK.
Obviously, in looking at
curricular changes, we were also tasked
with the notion of envisioning what
instructional staff and what
102
instructional support would look like.
And also the issue -- the very important
issue of the fact that governance within
the college in which nobody according to
UK’s governing regulations will hold a
tenured appointment. That -- that isn’t
-- we don’t envision that changing. That
hasn’t been the way it’s worked in honors
for sometime now and that wasn’t part of
our (inaudible).
So what does faculty governance
look like in the college that doesn’t
have -- that -- that isn’t a tenure
(inaudible) for any of the instructors
who work within the college? That was
kind of an interesting challenge that we
needed to discuss, and also how best to
staff this required foundational seminar
in an environment where it -- where it’s
been a bit of a challenge to broaden
faculty participation in honors
instruction. That’s an ongoing
103
challenge.
So our goal was to ensure that
moving forward the regular faculty at UK
own the honors curriculum while we still
get the instructional muscle to offer
this common seminar experience that we
think as a committee is pretty crucial to
the intellectual development of honor
students.
So what we’re envisioning is a
situation where the foundational honors
seminar would certainly be taught by any
of the regular faculty members who would
wish to participate in that, but we
certainly envision a scenario where, in
all likelihood, we would need to retain
the services of a modest cohort of
lecturers who would be tasked with
providing the meat of instruction for
this foundational seminar. There are a
number of models for this (inaudible)
other honors colleges.
104
Our challenge there is to make
sure that if we go in this direction,
those lectures are closely tied to the
core disciplines within other colleges at
UK. This is going to be critically
important. What we’re not looking for is
a passel of -- of honors instructors who
are cut out from the -- from the broader
college. So what we are recommending in
the report is that to the extent we need
to hire a small number of lecturers to
staff the foundational honors seminar,
that they be connected closely to their
core disciplines.
What does that mean in practice?
Well, a number of things. First, it’s
going to be critically important the core
discipline departments participate on the
hiring committees of any such lecturers
so that if we’re looking to hire a
philosopher, we’ll get faculty members
within the Department of Philosophy
105
participating actively within the hiring
committee. We envision a scenario where
-- I think there’s a buyer’s market for
young, exceptional talent out there
across many different sectors of the
University, we’re very aware of that. We
get good people to fill these positions
to the extent we need to fill them, but
it’s going to be critically important to
have departmental buy-in and for the
Honors College to consult closely with
core disciplines to make sure we are
hiring the right people to the extent we
need to do that.
We’re also mandating that there
would need to be regular instructional
time within the core discipline for any
lecturers that we hire. Do you want me
to take a question now?
BUTLER: It’s up to you.
HARLING: What do you think Katherine? I
don’t -- yeah, please.
106
BUTLER: J. S. Butler, Graduate School.
Instead of lecturers, how about
advanced graduate students?
HARLING: Well, that’s something that we
could -- that’s something that we could
talk about. Part of the -- part of the
difficulty here is making sure we have
somebody who can give us enough
instructional time to enable us to teach
the many sections of this course that
will need to be taught.
BUTLER: There are a number of
departments in which graduate students
teach. You could be very selective and
pick those with the -- their teaching
evaluations. So that would connect with
emphasizing graduate study on campus and
will allow you and graduate study to work
together.
HARLING: Well, it’s certainly an idea to
-- it’s certainly an idea that we haven’t
really discussed as a committee up until
107
this point, but I think your point is
well taken. Thank you for that.
Another really important factor
here would be the core discipline
departments would need to be involved in
merit and promotional reviews of any
lecturers hired within the honors
college.
And finally, and quite
importantly, we want to build up a
faculty governance situation within the
Honors College where any lecturers who
were hired would be mentored and really
protected from the dean, in a sense, by
the honors faculty of record that will be
broader governing responsibilities within
the Lewis Honors College than they
currently enjoy.
And so I want to sort of address
that fact, the governance piece now in
the next slide. We have a faculty of
record within the Honors College already.
108
These are -- these are eleven faculty
members from across the breadth of the
University who are excellent resources in
terms of the vetting of course proposals
within honors. What we envision is a
much more authoritative role for the
honors faculty of record moving forward,
such that they would function in a manner
akin to a departmental faculty on a
number of governance issues. And for
this to be the case, I think reasonably
they would need some (inaudible) DOE,
assign a task to the Honors College,
perhaps on the order of 5 percent.
That’s something that we can discuss at
greater length.
Several roles are envisioned for
this honors -- this -- this -- this sort
of beefed up version of the existing
honors faculty of record. One would be
to provide the kind of insulation from
any lecturers that might be hired to
109
teach the foundational seminar from the
dean in a way that the senior -- a senior
departmental faculty acts as a kind of
protection for junior faculty members
within their units.
We also see a need for the
permanent dean of the Honors College to
have a body that she or he can consult on
a regular basis to provide good counsel
on a wide variety of -- of issues. This
is something that obviously is common
across other colleges at UK. We need to
find a way to embed that into the honors
structure as we move forward. So that,
you know, with (inaudible), we’re
envisioning the fact that (inaudible)
would advise the Dean of Honors on
budgetary personnel matters very much the
way that council chairs might do in a
bigger college.
We also think it critically
important that the faculty of record
110
preside over annual merit review for any
lecturers that might be hired within
honors to -- to teach this foundational
seminar that we envision. Also to
adjudicate the question of promotion to
senior lecturer in -- in such cases. So
we envision a formalization of the role
of the faculty of record through a set of
rules at the college that I think would
look very similar to established
departmental rules or finding good models
to draw from within the (inaudible) of UK
universe here, but that role is going to
need to be beefed up and formalized in a
way that gives the faculty of record a
real kind of power and authority within
-- within the Lewis Honors College.
Now, in terms of the rest of the
curriculum, I’ve been focusing on this
foundational seminar because the
challenge of staffing is a significant
one. But, of course, here we’re talking
111
about three credits of a proposed 30
credit curriculum. As far as the rest of
the curriculum is concerned, and to the
extent we can encourage regular faculty
participation in the core seminar and --
in those three credits as well, what
we’re wanting to do is to both broaden
and deepen the involvement of the regular
UK faculty within the Lewis Honors
College. We’d like to see a wider
variety of honors seminars and more honor
sections, the 100 and 200 level courses,
than we do at present.
Now, we understand that in order
to make that happen, the Honors College
is going to have to be able to control
some significant incentive funding, which
it doesn’t really do at the moment.
Right now, I have about $175,000 a year
that I can use to support the
112
instructional mission of the Honors
College. It’s very difficult to persuade
deans and department chairs, who are
rightly skeptical, that lending one of
their star instructors to honors for a
semester to teach (inaudible) for, in
many cases than the PTI rate, is -- is
going to be any kind of a good deal for
them. So I’m out there (inaudible)
riding on a prayer and a shoeshine, and I
do the best I can and I do better than I
would have anticipated when I -- when I
took on this interim position. But the
permanent dean realistically is going to
need to have much more significant
recurring funds to be able to do
constructive deals with -- with deans,
with department chairs, so that we can
free up the time of our best teachers to
stand in front or in some cases behind,
because I usually lead my honors courses
113
from the rear, in front or behind our
best undergraduate students. I wish that
that were more true than it currently is.
But we’re envisioning a university in
which this becomes much more the norm.
It’s going to -- it’s going to require
some money to do that and we’re -- so
we’re certainly asking the -- the Provost
for beefed up incentive funding. We’re
recommending that this money be permitted
to be spent in flexible ways.
One size does not fit all when
it comes to the needs of the departments.
One department might want to take this
incentive funding and in terms -- in the
form of in-house travel money for the
regular faculty. Others might want to
put it right back into instruction. We
think flexibility is probably the order
of the day here. Up until now, really
the honors programs and now the honors
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colleges had one hand tied behind its
back in terms of being able to recruit
more robustly among the regular faculty.
We would like to see that situation
rectified.
As a way to do this, we’re also
recommending, and this is embedded in
some detail in the report, what we’re
calling a faculty fellows program as one
way to capitalize and anchor broader
faculty participation within the Lewis
Honors College, and obviously this is
just an idea that we have so far. It’s
modeled on several different faculty
fellows programs that we see in honors
colleges that we aspire to be more like.
There’s a very well developed faculty
fellows program, for example, at the
University of South Carolina, which is
nationally recognized as one of the
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outstanding honors colleges out there.
What we envision here is a situation
where perhaps something on the order of
nine faculty members, deliberately
brought in from across the university,
would commit to being faculty fellows
within honors for staggered terms up to
-- up to three years. One at one for
three years. And what we envision is an
idea where something on the order of half
their DOE during that period would be
assigned to honors. In other words,
enough that would enable them to teach
probably a course in honors per semester
during their service, while also
providing meaningful additional service
to the Honors College. As the college
has grown, that service necessities
become stronger and we -- right now we
lack faculty muscle to meet the service
obligations that attend a college of
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fairly substantial size at this point.
Order -- one case in point is application
review. We get -- we get in excess of
3500 applications to the Honors College
every year.
Right now, we’re reviewing all
these applications with a small staff and
-- and the good services of a handful of
really faculty volunteers and myself.
That’s what I’m going to do when I leave
this meeting is to go read more
applications because it is the season,
right? This is a place where a faculty
fellow could make a really positive
difference. Also to -- to get involved
in co-curricular events, and quite
importantly, we would envision a faculty
fellows as adding strength during their
term of service to the honors faculty of
record by serving as ex-officio members
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of that -- of that body. And so if you
do the math, you take the 11 current
members of the faculty of record, you add
maybe something on the order of 9 faculty
fellows. You have 20 -- you have a
council of 20 faculty members who can
provide counsel to the honors
(inaudible), who can adjudicate merit
evaluation and promotional questions to
the extent those arise, who can help
shape the curriculum, and who,
importantly, will contribute directly to
the teaching of honor students. We think
that something along these lines might
have the potential over time to be a bit
of a game changer here in terms of a seed
bedding, broader and deeper faculty
involvement within the Lewis Honors
College.
So that’s who we are, and I want
to once again thank my fellow committee
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members. I look forward to coming back
probably early in the spring to discuss
several of our proposals at greater
length after you all have had a chance to
digest our document. I apologize, it
extends beyond 10 pages. I was hoping to
be able to keep it at 10, but that was a
bit unrealistic. I hope you find it a
relatively readable report, however. We
spent a good deal of time on
wordsmithing. And with that, I’m happy
to take any additional questions. Yeah,
Matthew.
GIANCARLO: Matthew Giancarlo, Arts and
Sciences.
Phil, are you -- are you
interested in having feedback on this as
it’s presented?
HARLING: Sure. Yeah.
GIANCARLO: Because the one thing that
really stands out to me is that of all
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the proposals for curriculum and all the
possibilities for courses, there’s only
one program and one course that’s given
the privilege of now being required. And
in the proposal, I haven’t seen anything
that’s either dispositive or even
evidentiary as to why WRD/CIS 112 should
be required for this. Now, it says that
many students take it anyway. But in an
honors curriculum when we’re trying to
develop something new, I think we need a
bit more background and a bit more
justification for why three credits of
required course work for a particular
program and department should be set in
place.
And I would ask you if there’s
going to be guarantees that at this 100
level they aren’t going to be taught by
graduate students or PCAI’s who currently
teach the lion’s share of these kinds of
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courses for WRD/CIS or if there’s going
to be some kind of justification for one
of you, as opposed to the regular
curriculum of that class, which is not an
honors course. It might be an advanced
course, but it by no means has a
designation of a specific honors
disposition.
And three, because, you know,
Phil, I can think of courses in History
and Philosophy and English, in
International Studies or Political
Science that might serve these functions
just as well as this particular course.
So I would ask you and I would ask the
committee what the decision making
process was for picking out one course
out of our entire core for this kind of
particular distinction and whether that’s
really something that’s justified given
the overall flexibility in the rest of
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(inaudible)?
HARLING: Right. Well, you know, what
largely did drive it is the fact that a
large majority of students are currently
taking that course and there seems to be
a sense that --
GIANCARLO: Did anybody poll them to ask
what they think of it?
HARLING: Well, I’m certainly happy to
solicit more feedback from -- from
current honor students. I’m certainly
open to the notion of a situation that
would -- that would sort of guarantee
that a certain kind of facility in
writing and verbal communication, you
know, there are -- there are a variety of
ways of meeting that. This is simply the
-- the path that honor students have been
taking to a very large degree thus far.
It could be that we could think more
flexibly about it. I don’t know if any
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of my fellow committee members want to
offer any feedback on that particular
question.
SACHS: Well, I think Matt makes a good
point. And I -- I would really want to
know what is the status of our document
and how much can be revisited. I’m
asking about what the committee’s charge
is beyond submitting the (inaudible).
HARLING: Well, at the end of the day,
it’s a question of -- of the shrining and
curricular proposals, our -- our
recommendations. So nothing within the
document is -- is binding at this point.
It -- you know, it isn’t subject to an up
or down vote. We were simply wanting to
chart out a road map for how we get to
the 30 credits. It could be that this is
one that -- I -- I mean, I’m certainly
open to continued discussion.
GIANCARLO: Giancarlo. Given the size or
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the hope for increase in the size of the
Honors College, I do think that this is
something that ought to be maybe
deliberated on a little bit, a little bit
more, instead of just doing what we’ve
been doing to think about if this is, in
fact, the best way to deliver that
introductory skill set or whatever it is.
I mean, I do know that on your faculty of
record and the other committee members,
there’s nobody from WRD, and I’m not even
sure -- I guess we have one member from
CI.
HARLING: Uh-huh. And we did
consult -- we did consult the, you know,
the Directors of WRD on -- on what we had
-- what we envisioned here. We had a
good discussion with them. They were not
only amenable to it, they were
enthusiastic to it as an idea.
GIANCARLO: I’m sure they were.
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HARLING: And the other issue is it
something that -- that actually could be
delivered without -- with -- with -- at
current staffing levels, which is one
reason why we thought it an attractive
option. And the -- you know, and at this
point, the honors population is about
reached what it’s going to reach. We’re
about 10 percent of the undergraduate
student body.
So we’ll continue to grow, but
at this point going forward, I think more
or less (inaudible) with overall
enrollment going up at the University.
There is -- there is an idea that it will
continued to expand aggressively as a
program as it’s done over the past half
dozen years or so. Just to make that
point. Yeah.
SWANSON: Hollie Swanson, College of
Medicine.
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This reminds me of two
conversations. One is, I don’t know, a
decade long conversation that
we’ve had about writing across
curriculum. That conversation versus
having it, you know, in a school, of
course. And also the -- the conversation
that I had with my own honors course,
which has mostly engineers, and so in the
course, honors course I’ve been teaching
for the last two years, we have them
write about a page and a half every week
about the topic and then they go into
debate. So they’re getting written and
oral. And so, you know, so the students
were telling, you know, workload, but my
argument was, well, that’s your writing
requirement.
So in my own opinion, I sort of
like the idea that you’re writing for a
purpose rather than writing.
126
HARLING: Right. Exactly. Thank you for
that. Bob.
SANDMEYER: Bob Sandmeyer, Arts and
Sciences.
First of all, I want to commend
you all, the entire committee. I think
this is very impressive. My question
goes back to the lecturers and the role
of the lecturers. I was a lecturer for a
year so I’m -- so it’s kind of informed
from my -- from my experience as a
lecturer. One of the concerns I have
immediately when you were -- I mean, I --
I feel you for the requirements you have
and the constraints to fulfill those
requirements without hiring tenure track,
but one of the -- one of the restrictions
of a lecturer is that they’re, you know,
you’re restricted to teaching 100 to 300
level classes, which in the long run
leads to possibly a bifurcation of the
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faculty where you have lecturers teaching
at the lower level course work and then
the faculty working from the University
working in a higher level, which means
that students who take -- and I’m just
wondering if you all thought about this
-- this was part of your discussions
about how the ramifications of this.
Because what this -- (inaudible) on the
one hand students taking lecturers they
really like, but then forced to move
beyond them, not being able to work with
them.
But also, and this is my real
concern, that you have in honors, faculty
members who have a status below regular
faculty members, you know, RTR -- I mean
regular or STS faculty members who are
teaching the guts of the course. So I’m
just wondering if you all -- and that’s
the sense on which I mean kind of
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bifurcated. So I’m just wondering if you
all had thought about that and if and
what -- what -- if you had, what you --
what conclusions you have come to?
HARLING: Yeah. Well, the one conclusion
is that we want regular faculty to
continue to teach lower division honors.
That’s critically important. We just
didn’t think it was realistic to suppose
that there would be a lot of faculty, a
demand to teach this particular seminar.
And so realistically we’re looking at the
need for some extra instructional support
on that issue.
But having said all that, core
honors to a very significant extent would
continue to be the broader property of
the UK faculty. We wanted also to create
a mechanism where these lecturers would
occasionally be able to teach within
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their core discipline in a way that is
done to that core discipline and that
also, ideally, creates an opportunity for
regular faculty within that home
department, that core department to come
over and teach (inaudible) honors if
we’re getting a, you know, an honors
lecturer to teach -- to teach three
credits over there. So we’re trying to
build on a situation where there is a
degree of cross pollination to keep these
interesting for the lecturers, for the
core departments to feel like they’re
getting something of value from the
lecturers and to hopefully prevent the
lecturers from getting burnt out from
having to teach the same course time
after time. Even though we do envision
mechanisms for revitalizing that course
and revisiting its content, probably on
an annual basis, in which the lecturers
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who would do the lion’s share of the
instruction would take a very active role
in shaping it as it -- as it moves
forward. Yeah.
CHENG: It seems the Honor College
should offer something that’s unavailable
at UK. (Inaudible) inviting guest
lecturers, leaders of industry,
(inaudible), scientific field, a
different field. I remember there is a
New York Time commentator who did the
Freshman seminar for us at Princeton and
wrote about it in a book. That would
also solve our shortened faculty member
(inaudible).
HARLING: Yeah, we have, you know, we have
mechanisms for doing that and I’m not --
I’m certain we remain open to the idea of
bringing in people who are properly
qualified to -- to teach within honors
and so there are mechanisms for enabling
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that kind of a -- a teaching experience
within the college. I don’t -- I don’t
envision that disappearing. But we did,
as a committee, feel that the main
objective here was to make sure that
honors was, you know, was property owned
by the faculty of the -- of the
University, okay. Yeah.
DEBSKI: Liz Debski, A and S. So in the
past, I’ve been asked for just like
regular courses by particular students
who’ve enrolled in them to turn them into
honors courses with honors assignments
just for those in particular students.
Is that going to be necessary in the
future or are you going to --
HARLING: Yeah, I think the -- the idea is
that there would be -- what we want to
see is the development of -- if we feel
that there’s significant demand within
the honors population of undergraduates,
132
the addition of honor sections of
established departmental courses, and
this is a discussion we have on a
semester-by-semester basis --
DEBSKI: Yeah, but this is out -- this is
outside of honors sections. This is just
for individual students in a particular
class, a regular class in my department.
HARLING: Right. Yeah. Depending on the
nature of what -- of what you’re having
them do, it could qualify as a so-called
honors experience.
DEBSKI: It doesn’t, though. And so --
and so, in fact, I’ve had to talk about
additional assignments for just those
students, and I’m just wondering, again,
is that something that you’re going to
anticipate will no longer be necessary or
will students still be approaching you to
take, again, a regular class, add
assignments just for them and --
133
HARLING: Yeah. I’m hoping that the need
for that is going to diminish quite
substantially over -- over time as we
build up our offerings within honors
because that -- that provides, you know,
that’s a bigger onus on the instructor.
I totally see that. It’s not a way that
we want to go. I think it’s a way that
out of necessity, we’ve had to go in the
recent past.
What I’d like to see is honors
evolving in a way where those sorts of ad
hoc relationships are going to be a lot
less necessary. But that’s, you know,
that -- that will only come as a result
of -- of a beefed up honors curriculum
and sort of broader and deeper faculty
participation. So kick starting that is
going to be the big and important
challenge that we face moving forward.
So then we can relieve the folks like you
134
that -- Liz, of that -- of that need,
right? Yeah.
YOST: Scott Yost, Engineering. Just
one comment to take back, I guess. All
the stuff I think it’s good, but from a
student prospective, looking at this
program, you’re going from 21 to 30
hours. Now, that may be fine for Arts
and Sciences or Fine Arts would have a
quarter of the curriculum as electables.
But from an Engineering prospective,
which are very descriptive, the 21 hours
has been integrated pretty heavily which
has allowed engineering students to
participate in this, but now you’re
adding 9 hours.
So the first comment is, in the
112, is there going to be something for
students who come in that may get credit
-- transfer credit for that or is that
going to be required no matter what the
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background is in stuff like the 101 or
what about the 112, 110, 111? And then
the other thing is, you know, why not
potentially maybe make it a tiered
structure to -- to meet both avenues? In
other words, students who want this
broader prospective, but not have the
burden of 9 additional hours in an
already full curriculum, then maybe they
get a high level of honors and the
students meet the existing (inaudible)
which seems to be very good, and they get
regular honors.
HARLING: That’s the one reason why –-
another reason why -- what I should have
added earlier in my response to -- to
Matt is that because so many of our
students already take the 112. That
includes many engineering students who
meet the requirement that way and we felt
that this was one way of maintaining the
136
kind of flexibility that we want to see
while adding additional credit
requirements elsewhere. We did have a
number of standing faculty members on the
committee. This issue of flexibility is
one that came up and (inaudible) is here
in the room. John, you want to speak to
that issue.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, we absolutely talked about
that. It is an issue. We also have
changes in Engineering. We’re going to
be reducing our curricular to 128 credit
hours. In a sense, that opens up a
swatch when I think about it that way,
but yeah, we definitely talked about this
and felt this was a reasonable compromise
in terms of a college like Engineering,
which is pretty prescriptive and
incorporating that with the -- with the
honor students.
And as was noted in the report,
137
a lot of the honor students come in with
so many credits that we felt there was
enough -- enough flexibility there with
the students we’re considering that
they’d be able to accommodate these --
these additional credits in terms of real
courses. A couple -- a couple of
additional courses they’d have to take
during their time at UK.
HARLING: They come in on an average of 29
credit hours, which kind of amazed me
when -- when I saw that -- that figure.
So we’re hoping that, again, we know
there’s been a lot of discussion about
the balance and the need to retain the
kind of flexibility that a lot of
(inaudible) majors need with a way to --
to bind the curricular experience with
the purpose of either finding some --
some common ground. Because right now
all we have is a radical ala carte menu
138
essentially. And that works with respect
to the flexibility, but I don’t think it
really works very well and I don’t think
that anything works very well with
respect to some modicum of intellectual
coherence in the experience. So it’s a
balancing act. I take the point for
sure. It’s after 5:00.
MCCORMICK: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thanks to Phil and the committee. Just
to give you a reminder that many of the
committee members also on the search
committee -- I don’t think that Phil is
on that.
HARLING: No.
MCCORMICK: Do you want to give them
(inaudible) of where we are.
HARLING: Yeah. Well, the committee has
been appointed and as Katherine -- as
Katherine says, most of the members were
members of the transition committee so
139
they’re very well versed (inaudible) in
all things honors at this point. God
love them. It is being chaired by Claire
Renzetti, who is the Chair of the
Department of Sociology, and Dean Dave
Blackwell at Gatton College of Business
and Economics. There’s been a draft kind
of position description. There was an
open forum dedicated to that position
description on December 1. I -- I
believe the committee felt they got
really good feedback from the forum. So
I suspect that the ad is set to go out
quite soon, and I’m picking on Leon
because I know he’s a member of the
committee. What’s the timeline? Because
I don’t know.
SACHS: The ad goes out -- there’s an
outside search committee -- search
(inaudible), right, that’s involved in
guiding us through the schedule.
140
Applications will come in and start to be
reviewed in February. There will be
interviews in early March and a
recommendation of, I think, three or four
unranked finalists will be submitted to
the Provost in March and he will make
that decision (inaudible).
HARLING: So they seem to be very much on
schedule for a July 1 transfer of power
which I eagerly await. That means I
remain your humble servant.
Thank you very much.
MCCORMICK: Do I hear a motion to adjourn?
WHITAKER: Motion to adjourn.
MCCORMICK: Mark Whitaker.
UNIDENTIFIED: Seconded.
The meeting adjourned at 5:08 p.m.
141
C E R T I F I C A T E OF S E
R V I C E
COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY )
COUNTY OF FAYETTE )
I, LISA GRANT CRUMP, the undersigned
Notary Public in and for the State of Kentucky at
Large, certify that the facts stated in the
142
caption hereto are true; that I was not present at
said proceedings; that said proceedings were
transcribed from the digital file(s) in this
matter by me or under my direction; and that the
foregoing is a true record of the proceedings to
the best of our ability to hear and transcribe
same from the digital file(s).
My commission expires: April 6, 2019.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set
my hand and seal of office on this the 3rd day of
January, 2016.
_______________________
LISA GRANT CRUMP
NOTARY PUBLIC,
STATE-AT-LARGE
K E N T U C K Y